Hornets 89, Knicks 85

Did you know that Stoudemire is actually Hebrew for “Mardi Gras Ruiner”? Someone had to be energized by NOLA’s jerseys. Who better than Stat – still working past tragedy and into game shape – to go all Jagermeister on the hapless Hornets with a display of vicious dunks, deft drives, and overall rowdy play?

Now look at his grade. Notice a disconnect? That’s because Amar’e Stoudemire plays defense how I wash dishes: Not well.

Bill Walker, SG26 MIN | 1-5 FG | 0-0 FT | 6 REB | 1 AST | 2 PTS | -4

You know you’re not taking home an Oscar when your first shot – a three pointer from the corner, no less – ends with a concession attendant being knocked unconscious. Walker was virtually invisible in this one, which is probably better than a visible Bill Walker putting up that kind of stat line.

Fun Fact: Starting Sunday, Carmelo Anthony will be playing this basketball position.

Playing opposite Chris Kaman would probably frighten me, too – the widow’s peak, utterly frightening Nordic frame, and deceptive jumper are enough to make most men quake in their Converse. Chander and Stat failed to communicate on a number of low post screens, resulting in a bevy of easy baskets where no blood was shed.

HOOOOOOOOLLLY shit. Like the Knicks’ improbable run, Landry’s resurgence had to be tempered at some point. We just didn’t think it would be, like, this bad. The late foul on a trapped and helpless Marco Belinelli was just the worst. Ditto the late three point attempt that barely grazed the rim – taken with enough space between he and defender to park a Greyhound. Good thing he’ll be walking back into his apartment to find hookers fighting over the couch.

Welp, we figured it out: Wear jerseys outlawed in more than a dozen countries, slay Linsanity. His basketball shooting ability was noticeably more confident and encouraging tonight. But the turnovers? Jay-zus! Yeah, the four steals kinda-sorta made up for them, but not really. I don’t know if Lin’s telegraphing the passes, or just sending texts — either way, he’s being way too sloppy with the ball, particularly in the paint.

Of this I am convinced: At various points during games, Dan D’Antoni sneaks over to the opponents’ bench during timeouts – he’s wearing ball boy camouflage, you see… just work with me – and hangs strings of venison from each of the opponents’ shorts. Here’s the thing: Jared Jeffries LOOOOOOOOVES venison. That’s why he does things like grab three steals, take two charges, and near single-handedly keep the game within striking distance for the Knicks. He also apparently has an egg-sized wound over his left eye.

Steve Novak, SF20 MIN | 2-9 FG | 0-0 FT | 4 REB | 1 AST | 5 PTS | +13

The first half was like watching Robin Hood try to hit a bull’s eye after six flagons of mead. The second half was like watching Robin Hood try to hit a bull’s eye after a six mead flagon hangover. Off night aside, I’m pretty sure this guy will hit some big shots down the stretch. Just a prediction.

Iman Shumpert, G26 MIN | 3-9 FG | 2-2 FT | 3 REB | 3 AST | 9 PTS | +3

Mark my words: Iman Shumpert will win Dancing With the Stars at some point between 2027 and 2090. Dude just thinks way too much about his moves — on offense, anyway. As per usual, Shumpert was all up in a brother’s shit on defense, often to the detriment of said team effort. A pretty bad game, on the whole, but hopefully an outlier going forward.

Five Things We Saw

The next time David Stern gathers his Board of Ghouls or whatever, outlawing jerseys that are purple on the front, green on the back, and yellow everywhere else, needs to be high on the list of rule change priorities. My wife spent hours scrubbing eye blood out of the carpet. Inexcusable.

Normally, teams would to go out and get blitzed after a Friday game. But those jerseys, man, they worked. It’s like the Knicks saw them during warm ups, thought New York City was hosting Mardi Gras, and everyone just casually sipped Gatorade cups half-filled with Five O’Clock Gin on the bench for the next two hours.

Ten minutes in, I almost flipped over to the Michigan State-Wisconsin game, just to see some exciting basketball… Ok, that game actually happened last night, and I’d never in good conscious watch a Big Ten game during a Knick game, unless I wanted pure violence. The second half picked up somewhat, but the Hornets clearly had the better energy, being patient on offense, finding the open man, and locking down nobly on D.

Back in high school, we had to run 65s every time we committed a turnover. You know what a 65 is? Running baseline-to-baseline 5 times in 65 seconds. Not as easy as it sounds…. Anyway, if Coach Schluter had his way, the Knicks would be spending most of tomorrow afternoon vomiting onto fruit platters.

Having been deprived Mike and Clyde during for night’s blowout, my brain wasn’t in the mood to process three broadcast commentators. Mike and Clyde is one thing. Mike, Clyde, and Bernard!?!? Too much, man, you took too much, too much! Granted, The King’s cameo gave me an opportunity to tell my wife about how Bernard King was awesome once. Me: “He holds the all-time record for points in one game by a Knick with 60.” Wife: “That’s not as good as Wilt.”

hoolahoop:
Amare C-
Lin B
Is that because Lin plays such good defense. No can’t be that.
Oh yeah, he’s J.Lin, not allowed to say anything negative.

C’mon, if you’re going to be fair, put the C- next to Jeremy, too. He played below mediocre.

Relative to what, is the question. Lin was indeed mediocre, but his mediocrity resulted from attempting to orchestrate the entire offense, not trying to keep Gustavo Ayon off the glass. Greivis Vasquez certainly gave them problems, but most of his shots were taken with at least one hand in his face.

The knicks lost this game because they had no intensity throughout the game until the fourth quarter. By the time they ratcheted it up and got into some sort of rhythm the clock said 0:00.
Amare must not want his hair to get mussed up based on his matador defense.
J. Lin, please don’t believe the hype, or you’ll crash as hard as you arose. You’re best as high energy creator. You don’t have the raw talent to play hero ball every night.

The good news is they have confidence to turn it on when they want. Moral of the story:
Don’t dig deep holes.

Maybe this loss was good. . . causing a little bit of chip on their shoulder going into the Dallas game.

Jim Cavan: Lin was indeed mediocre, but his mediocrity resulted from attempting to orchestrate the entire offense,

Lin’s energy seemed low orchestrating the offense. Remember how he burst onto the scene running through defenses from anywhere and everywhere? I didn’t see it tonight until the 4th, then in desperation to get to the hoop to turn things around.
. . . and the turnovers.

Lin was pretty easily the best player again, though, and the 9 turnovers were counterbalanced a bit by the 4 steals. the rest of the team shot 3-19 from 3 point range, that will not happen on JR Smith’s watch.

my man Shumpie was mostly pretty awful, I again implore NY to hire a specialized coach for him, Ron Harper was my suggestion if possible. get Clyde out of the booth if you have to, bring back Sprewell, someone who can teach from experience as a strong two way big guard.

I love all these analysis. we lost this game because we missed 10 fucking free throws! Fields and Chandler have been shooting 50% at the line for god knows how many games by now. These two have been terrible at the line for some time now.

Of course, we won’t even talk about the overall shooting in general. The team shot an appalling TS% of 48.4 while LIN shot a TS% of 58.03 and Amare a 58.53. So I wouldn’t be so quick at blaming either one of them. and clearly the defense wasn’t the problem with NO scoring 89!

Having perimeter shooters like JR Smith and Carmelo Anthony on the floor instead of Landry Fields and Bill Walker is going to do wonders for this offense. People questioning whether they’ll disrupt the chemistry or ruin the ball movement have no idea what is going on or how a D’Antoni team works.

jon abbey:
oh, and was I the only one who laughed when Shumpert tried Lin’s spiral move to try to get free under the basket, got to the same release point, and then missed wildly?

Def saw that… I think Clyde and Breen were talking about it, how Chandler’s D was contagious. I think it’s more emulation, in the same way that we’ve seen Fields try some fancy passes after Lin has been doing his thing, how Toney had everyone fooled into thinking he was coming around when Billups had him under his wing. But you know what, I’ll like to Shump try to copy Lin more. One thing I don’t understand is how horrible Bibby is. I mean I know his body is probably failing him but I thought that him teaching the young’ns was going to be his biggest contribuition to the knicks. Or was he always just a shooting guard? I remember him Leading Sac… But for that matter, how is MDA not able to teach any floor general stuff to these guys? Lin just has it, MDA said it himself he didn’t even know the guy. But Shump and Toney look like they don’t have the SLIGHTEST clue. I know they’re more combo guards but still. MDA is just not a teacher, I’m telling you. He’d be an excellent coordinator in the NFL, a guy that comes up with a great game plan, and that’s it. Luckily, with this roster there’s not much teaching that needs to be done. Still, sooner or later D’Antoni is going to be the weakest link if he doesn’t get more out of his players.

you can start either Baron or Lin, but Baron is more used to opposing PGs coming at him at the start of every game. I like Lin in the Barea role a lot, and that’ll keep him fresher for the home stretch. I’d bring in Smith for Fields as soon as Melo or Amare goes to the bench the first time, then Fields can play SF after that and Smith and Shumpie can cover SG.

D’Antoni doesn’t like to play 10 guys, but this is a unique season, four more games in five days coming up.

Well, that does look like a good squad now, doesn’t it! But Jeffries, only 10? Come on, we need some defenders out there (him and Shump are our only hope at stopping any offense). And the other guys can’t be playing so many minutes in such a game-crunched season. I’d like to see a little more balance there. And Davis is going to be way too out of shape until the playoffs I’m sure… I can almost guarantee that. But again, I really have no idea what I’m talking about… I’m just a JPC puppet.

And as much as I love a man named Dirk, we got this game Sunday. That is, as long as Melo has been paying any attention to Lin these last 2 weeks and doesn’t act like a selfish baby out there.

hoolahoop:
The knicks lost this game because they had no intensity throughout the game until the fourth quarter. By the time they ratcheted it up and got into some sort of rhythm the clock said 0:00.
Amare must not want his hair to get mussed up based on his matador defense.
J. Lin, please don’t believe the hype, or you’ll crash as hard as you arose. You’re best as high energy creator. You don’t have the raw talent to play hero ball every night.

The good news is they have confidence to turn it on when they want. Moral of the story:
Don’t dig deep holes.

Maybe this loss was good.. . causing a little bit of chip on their shoulder going into the Dallas game.

it’s not playing hero ball, if Novak and Fields are a little less terrible than they were in this game we would have won, Lin did a bad job taking care of the ball but he’s in the 7th start of his career, and has again put this team in the position to win the game.

we would have been completely blown out if _________ started this game instead of Lin.

Re Lin’s turnovers- at least three of them were Amare’s fault- not being ready for passes. One was a perfect feed on a fast break that amare let go through his hands, another was a bounce pass in transition where Amare did not run hard to the rim, and the third was an attempted alley oop that Amare never jumped for. Some of this is just lack of p,aging together. What happened to Amare’s hands though? He used to catch all those Nash passes in traffic.

We are also seeing someone we will see a lot of in the future: teams attacking Amare’s total lack of defensive awareness. MDA may need to go a lot more offense/defense than we’ve seen so far.

Still no one anywhere seems to have commented on the clear path foul on Vazquez after the Lin/Chandler double team and steal. That was the DEFINITION of a clear path foul- should have been 2FTs AND the ball. That could’ve been the game right there.

But as someone said above- you can’t shoot in the mid60s from the line, have 21 turnovers, and expect to win in this league, even against the hornets.

Bruno Almeida: it’s not playing hero ball, if Novak and Fields are a little less terrible than they were in this game we would have won, Lin did a bad job taking care of the ball but he’s in the 7th start of his career, and has again put this team in the position to win the game.

we would have been completely blown out if _________ started this game instead of Lin.

The beauty of sports is that it’s not scored on a curve. It is what it is. Excuses don’t change the score.
Lin is getting all the accolades for his great play. Last night he didn’t play so good. He’s already admitted it.

Little off topic, but have you guys noticed a little deterioration in the quality of New York fans’ signs amid Linsanity?

There have been lots of cringe-inducing ones. I’m going to put this down to the fact that a lot more Asians are probably attending the games and I assume they’re not really marketing/ad guru types. Probably astrophysicists who just started getting into basketball.

2. Lin Your Face (Of all the puns on Jeremy’s name, this one is by far the coolest. Actually, it may be the only cool one. Please no more “Lincredible” “To Linfinity,” etc., etc. They’re just lame. Stop it! This is New York not Kansas City or Phoenix. Madison Square Garden needs to confiscate bad signs!)

Bruno Almeida: it’s not playing hero ball, if Novak and Fields are a little less terrible than they were in this game we would have won, Lin did a bad job taking care of the ball but he’s in the 7th start of his career, and has again put this team in the position to win the game…

I co-sign… there were a LOT of things that, if the Knicks were a bit less terrible in, could’ve landed them a W. Coincidentally, if 26 pts on 18 shots (w/9 TOs) is “falling back to earth”, then I’m still insanely excited about this kid’s future.

bluemax:
…we lost this game because we missed 10 fucking free throws! Fields and Chandler have been shooting 50% at the line for god knows how many games by now. These two have been terrible at the line for some time now.

Of course, we won’t even talk about the overall shooting in general. The team shot an appalling TS% of 48.4while LIN shot a TS% of 58.03 and Amare a 58.53. So I wouldn’t be so quick at blaming either one of them. and clearly the defense wasn’t the problem with NO scoring 89!

FTs were another one of those things the team could’ve been a little less terrible at. I’d like to agree with you in that holding a team to 89 points means D wasn’t the problem, but the Hornets were playing slow-it-down-end-of-shot-clock offense that reminded me of the Mike Fratello-coached/Tyrone Hill-led Cleveland Cavs offense of the (mid)1990s. As for Amar’e given a grade of a C- despite 26pts/12rebs, I’ll go with a Chris Rock quote: “I’m not saying I would’ve did it… but I understand.”

Spree8:
I seriously doubt that Buress will find it humorous if a white man made a joke about him that includes the word “nig**r”.

just another pathetic attempt to gain publicity.

Have you ever heard of Hannibal Burress before this morning’s postgame thread? He’s one of the best young standups in comedy today. Your eagerness to judgmentally dismiss him says a lot about you.

Let me tell you a story. Once, my late high school Brit Lit teacher (RIP Mr. Hurst) stumped me on a trivia question. “That’s a chink in your armor,” he said. Before I could process what he’d said, Mr. Hurst apologized. Then we all laughed, partly out of relief.

Having always been the bookish sort, I give “chink in the armor” a little more leeway, as it was an expression before “chink” became a racial slur in the late 1800s. It’s still not appropriate to say in front of Asian people, though. But it sure is funny to me because of the inevitable delay it takes for the speaker to realize the literal implications of what they just said, followed by the profuse apologies once they do.

Jim Cavan: Relative to what, is the question. Lin was indeed mediocre, but his mediocrity resulted from attempting to orchestrate the entire offense, not trying to keep Gustavo Ayon off the glass. Greivis Vasquez certainly gave them problems, but most of his shots were taken with at least one hand in his face.

Lin wasn’t great, but Amare’s defensive rotations were awful.

thank u all stat wants 2 do is score hes not a team player like jeffries and jefries is way beter on D getting 2 3 4 charges a game take stat out the line upp and let him come off the bench then good thinks will start 2 happen again

hoolahoop: The beauty of sports is that it’s not scored on a curve. It is what it is. Excuses don’t change the score.
Lin is getting all the accolades for his great play. Last night he didn’t play so good. He’s already admitted it.

it’s not making excuses, is realizing that the team let him down today.

he’ll obviously never say it, because he’s a very humble guy who knows how to say the right things to be a leader, but it just wasn’t his fault.

we have to criticize him for the turnovers, yes, but 26 pts on 18 shots while being the only guy who can create a shot on the team is still pretty good for me and much better than Landry’s, Novak’s and Walker’s contributions.

Doug: Have you ever heard of Hannibal Burress before this morning’s postgame thread? He’s one of…

Well..obviously misinterpreted on my part.. sick, drowsy..careless yes,very.. just some of the symptoms I get when my Knicks lose a close game……but you are not seriously defending ESPN for such remark are you? talk about poor choice of word.. I won’t be surprised if someone gets hang over this.